


A Scent like Fresh Cut Hay

by charliebrown1234



Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Chemical Drowning, Gas attack, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:02:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26995591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charliebrown1234/pseuds/charliebrown1234
Summary: December 19th, 1915. Ypres, France. Aziraphale gets caught by a German attack while in the trenches.Written for Whumptober 2020, prompt #13. Breathe in Breathe Out
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Whumptober 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959883
Comments: 10
Kudos: 45





	A Scent like Fresh Cut Hay

**Author's Note:**

> No 13. BREATHE IN BREATHE OUT
> 
> Delayed Drowning **| Chemical Pneumonia |** Oxygen Mask

_Aziraphale is dreaming. The sky is blue overhead, and he can sense Crowley next to him. They’re lying in a field, the sweet smell of freshly cut hay a refreshing departure from the stench of the trenches. If Aziraphale turns his head, he can see Crowley smiling at him. It’s one of Crowley’s true smiles, teeth bright and eyes crinkling. Aziraphale reaches out to interlace their fingers. Crowley smiles even brighter, reaches out his hand to touch Aziraphale’s face, and Aziraphale turns his head into Crowley’s hand._

_The smell of hay grows stronger, tickling Aziraphale’s throat. He smothers the instinct to cough and closes his eyes, enjoying the feel of Crowley’s smooth palm against his cheek. “Angel,” Crowley says, in the most devastating voice. Aziraphale opens his eyes, and Crowley is looking at him so tenderly, his yellow eyes like sunflowers, and Aziraphale leans forward and - coughs. It’s a harsh and breathless hack, but Crowley’s expression doesn’t waver. Aziraphale clears his throat, leans forwards a second time, but he coughs again, harsher now, and he can’t catch his breath. As the dream dissipates around him, he hears someone shouting, “ - phale!”_

And then he’s back in the mud, someone shaking him, shouting, and the smell of hay is everywhere. He’s choking in it, drowning, and he can’t seem to catch his breath. Someone is pulling him from the rough bed and wrestling a gas mask over his head, tugging the flannel down over his eyes and covering his mouth. He can hear sirens and gongs in the background, and someone is shouting, “Gas attack, Father Fell, just hold on!” But he can’t concentrate on anything except for the cloying fabric over his face and the coughs he can’t seem to stop. 

He hunches over, wheezing, trying to breathe out through the exhalation tube of his mask, but he can’t see where it is. The eye pieces aren’t fitted correctly over his face, and he pulls clumsily at it to readjust, but he doesn’t manage to move it far before he’s choking again, hacking up the scent of fresh cut grass into his mask. He shuts his eyes, clutches at his heaving chest, and feels his legs waver beneath him. The coughing is getting worse, his face heating up and his eyes burning, and he’s rapidly becoming lightheaded. 

Someone yanks on his arm, pulls him roughly towards destinations unknown as he coughs and coughs and coughs. There’s a part of him that’s distantly worried about discorporating, and how he’s going to explain all of this to Gabriel. He’d promised to stay away from the front, and Aziraphale doesn’t think he’ll be able to plead ‘wrong place, wrong time’ with destroyed lungs. 

He’s set down against a wall, and he tries to curl up and catch his breath through the never ending coughs. He manages to open his eyes and squint through the fogged eyepieces of his mask at a medic, who is attempting to manhandle the exhalation tube into his mouth, but it’s a futile effort at best. Harsh coughs are tearing through him, ripping his lungs apart. Aziraphale resigns himself to discorporation as his vision slowly fades to black.

* * *

Aziraphale wakes up horizontal with a cold breeze on his face. His lungs feel heavy, each breath crackling in his chest. He startles as a nurse passes by his bed, and then he can’t breathe at all as he hacks and coughs for air. He curls involuntarily, pressing his knees to his chest as he tries to cough out the fluid in his lungs, but it does nothing to help. He’s drowning on dry land, black spots crowding his vision like flies, and he wishes that he’d just died the first time so as to be spared this indignity, and then hands are pulling him upright and he manages to catch a single breath of air. 

It’s cold and clean, and it’s enough of a reprieve to try and force his rebellious lungs to breathe normally. After several long minutes of wheezes and coughs, he is able to open his blurry eyes and focus on the nurse standing at his bedside. 

“Hello,” Aziraphale manages to croak.

“Hello,” the nurse says, looking worried. “They pulled you from the front lines. Do you remember what happened?”

“A gas attack, I think. I was asleep.” 

“Do you remember what it smelled like? Or the color?”

Aziraphale rasps out what little he remembers, then roughly rubs at his eyes. 

“Don’t touch your face!” The nurse snaps, pulling his hands away. “The chemicals will only make things worse.” She efficiently washes his face and hands, then helps him change into a clean shirt. It’s loose on him, obviously meant for a larger man, and Aziraphale wonders if it’s original owner had left it behind willingly. 

“I don’t have a clean collar, Father, I’m sorry,” the nurse says. 

“It’s all right, my dear. Thank you.” Sometimes he wishes he’d dressed as a medic instead. The strange deference people give him makes him uncomfortable, as though they were placing Aziraphale above themselves simply because he looked like a man of the cloth.

“All we can do for you is let you rest and monitor your lungs,” the nurse says, helping Aziraphale settle back down onto the bed. As soon as he’s horizontal, Aziraphale feels like he’s breathing through sludge. 

“Thank you,” Aziraphale coughs. The nurse walks away (had he even gotten her name?) and he props himself back up again before a coughing fit can over take him.

He needs to get back to the front lines. If he’s going to discorporate he might as well use up his miracle budget before he goes. He’ll tell Gabriel he was caught in a gas explosion or some such and that he needed to help the victims. One healing miracle looks similar enough to another, and the miracle he’d need to fix his own damaged lungs is going to get him pulled back to Heaven for the next twenty years anyway. 

He still doesn’t understand why he’s continually reprimanded for helping humans. Yes, their trials and misfortunes are all part of ‘The Great Plan’, but surely She doesn’t want them to suffer _too_ terribly. Besides, didn’t all of Heaven’s power come from Her in the first place? And new corporations were simple enough to make, they just took time and concentration. And what did angels have if not time? It’s not like most of them _did_ anything upstairs as far as Aziraphale could tell. They certainly weren’t helping humans adjust to the afterlife. 

Aziraphale gives himself a shake and pushes those thoughts away. He shouldn’t be thinking such things. He’s just tired. That’s why he’d fallen asleep in the trench in the first place. The oppressive misery of the Germans and British pushed down on him like a weight, almost crushing in its magnitude. If Aziraphale didn’t put it down every so often by taking a nap or escaping to another part of the world he’d be flattened completely. And wouldn’t that be a funny sight. A pancake angel, like those picture strips in the newspapers. 

Aziraphale rolls himself out of bed and stands upright, miracling a clean shirt and collar as he goes. He’ll start healing here, in the medical tent, then move back to the trenches until his corporation can’t function anymore. For the sake of the soldiers around him (they’re boys, really, boys and children), he hopes he lasts longer than a few hours. 

He liberates the camp stool next to his bed and sits heavily at the cot next to him, taking the soldier’s hand solemnly. He’s sleeping, as most of them are, and he smothers a cough in his elbow before reaching inward for Heaven’s power to heal the young man’s wounds. He wants to heal the boy (Willie Acomb, according to his intuition) enough that he'll no longer be suffering, but not so much that the boy gets put back on the front lines. Aziraphale is tired of dying young men crying out for their mothers, and if he has something to say about it there’ll be a few less going back to fight.

When he’s finished healing Willie, he stands up and goes to move his stool, but the change in altitude has him wheezing for air. He leans his weight on the bed and casts a “notice me not” miracle around his person as he coughs and coughs. His lungs are failing faster than he’d anticipated, and he still has an entire hospital left to go.

* * *

Aziraphale’s made it around to about half the soldiers in the room, but he can’t breathe. All he can manage is tiny sips of air, any deeper and he coughs so harshly he feels like he’s about to tear apart. He knows he probably only has a few minutes left before his corporation gives up the ghost completely, but he’s fairly certain he could manage one more miracle if he could just get to the next bed. But he’s not certain he _can_ make it to the next bed. His chest is claggy and full of fluid, and his head’s so heavy he doesn’t think he can lift it off the cot he’s resting it on.

One more miracle. He can manage one more miracle. He pushes himself up quickly, using the cot as leverage, and just as quickly begins to fall to the ground. His lungs wheeze in his chest, vision growing dark, and he thinks he knocks something over before he crumples. Oh, this position is far worse. Forced horizontal on the ground, he feels like he’s drowning, unable to breathe through the coughs as his body attempts to expel the fluid in his lungs. 

His “notice me not” miracle must have collapsed at the same time he did, and now he can hear someone shouting as gentle hands cradle him upright for air. It’s too late, though. Aziraphale is done fighting. Part of him hopes his death is elegant, like the paintings John Trumbull had done. The nurses holding him would look anguished, distressed at Father Fell’s untimely death, and his expression would be slightly pained, but peaceful. 

In reality, Aziraphale suspects he looks like a dying fish, clammy and gasping for air. He’ll chalk the vanity up to oxygen deprivation. But there’s no sense in lingering and distressing the nurses more than he already has. With a stifled gasp, he stops his heart and waits for the blackness to encompass him. Time to go back to Heaven for his reprimand. At least he did what he could while he was here.

**Author's Note:**

> I did a comically large amount of research for this fic and ended up using exactly three tidbits. The horrifying WWI gas mask Aziraphale would be wearing looks like [this,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PH_helmet#/media/File:A_World_War_I_British_gas_hood_c.1915.jpg) and the John Trumbull painting he references as he’s dying is [this one.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/99/The_Death_of_General_Montgomery_in_the_Attack_on_Quebec_December_31_1775.jpeg)
> 
> Also, I based this fic off of the German phosgene attack on December 19th, 1915. The gas attack caused 120 deaths, mainly because the victims were sleeping, but the long term casualties due to lung damage were over a thousand. You can read more about this historical event [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_phosgene_attack_\(19_December_1915\))
> 
> As always, if you're interested in seeing more works like this, subscribe to the series or to my author's page!


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